I’d just be happy to see Zwift doing more to look after the health and well-being of those 39kg riders zooming along at 4.8w/kg at 190w for hours and hours. 
Can’t be that healthy… They should get a holiday from Zwift until they are “better”.
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I know what sticky watts is and how people cheat with them (pedal a hard stroke for less than a second, then let the sticky-watts keep filling the same watts in for a whole second thinking your trainer connection dropped out). What is micro bursting and why is it considered cheating by the community? (I have not heard the term before.)
Does this post at the top explain it ?
? 1 hoping their trainer gets stuck at a high watts, the other hoping that high short term watts generate more speed than constant pedalling ?
Ok. So with micro bursting the person is actually doing the effort? Then that doesn’t seem like it could possibly be construed as cheating, so what’s everyone on about?
I have never made it work, but the idea seems to be that it generates more speed using a loophole than you’d get in real life.
I have seen sticky watts in action, an Australian guy used to do it all the time on his rides, 360w-400w bursts then coast, then burst again. This was for the entire ride.
Again I could never make that work. Ah well.
My use of Zwift is to try and maintain or improve fitness rather than finding workarounds to go faster for less input.
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Wasn’t that long ago Zwift said it doesn’t exist, now we have rules against it.
For Round 2 we have four key ruleset changes:
- Transmitting cadence to the game will become mandatory for all.
- Any form of unconventional cadence technique (such as sprint-coast) will be outlawed and will result in an instant and automatic DQ.
- Scratch race scoring will change to 80 finish points for the winner, decreasing in 1-point increments for everyone else with all riders receiving at least 1 point for finishing.
- Teams may change up to 4 un-disqualified racers on their team BETWEEN rounds. If they change more than 4, their team will be entered into the reranking pool which may mean they are placed in a different division. (This is being done to prevent, for example, a team in Division 3 from removing all racers and bringing on much stronger riders.)
Good to see, shame it’s taken so so long to recognise it’s a problem.
Now how do community events take advantage of the ability to DQ these riders?
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@Lee_H ZRL is still run by wtrl. not ZHQ. i think. who know what zhq think of it
What they do about it is the best indication of what they think about it. “instant and automatic DQ” (ie, without waiting for someone to report it) sounds appropriate, but if that happened I think we would have heard about it already. Someone would show up here complaining about their DQ.
the actual benefits of pedalling like you just cramped up 20 miles from home are up for debate but “unusual pedalling styles” (their phrasing) are explicitly prohibited in zwift esports conduct pdf. i don’t make the rules but them’s the rules
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zhq also prohibit it in the zgp (what used to be the premier league) rulebook. the wording is kinda vague and probably doesnt extend to community racing but its in there
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As you say, it was alteady prohibited, but by putting it up-front like this WTRL are hoping that it scares people off from trying to get away with it.
I mean, micro bursting was recommended by zwift to stay within packs on the updated pack dynamics at one time….
That’s not how you do microbursting.
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I’ve seen/raced with it first hand in a wtrl ttt. It’s exactly how it works. Burst 3-5 sec then stop pedaling. The target is to get into sync with the time it takes zwift to register you signal from your device. 3-5 sec delay is the target. It’s not rocket science, it’s a pretty easy cheat if you can nail down the timing. It can also be setup with a emulator if your interested…
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zwift’s global tick rate is probably either 0.3 or 0.5s (have not actually tried to measure it personally but anywhere between 0.3 and 1s is usually what mmo platforms run on) and most PMs broadcast once a second, with a couple of exceptions in the kickr with direct connection enabled and (not sure) the tacx neo? maybe. but i get what you’re trying to say
a 3s effort is pretty much just a 3s effort, though. zwift isnt quite that laggy haha.
It more of what your home network and zwift’s network latency is combined with unzipping the protocol and if it’s protected or not.(it’s usually around 20ms) I’m just really going on when the avatar moves and when your number show up on your screen and when you start and stop pedaling….
Are there sticky low watts though?
@Mr.Ferdinand are you talking about the tick rate? i think zwift would be 10-20 tick per sec.(i hope) more is better.
And where did David suggest repeating it in a loop?
He was talking about one quick burst, which is something that would likely work on any trainer. What you’re talking about is something completely different which only works on a small subset of trainers.
It’s problematic either way.